Outnumbered series 5 episode 3 review: The Goddaughter

This last and regrettably final series of Outnumbered is just going from strength to strength.

Radio Times review

Teenage hormones are surging through the Brockman household while parents Pete and Sue desperately try, Canute-like, to stem the tide.

"Ben is only 13 and that's another one that I've lost to the testosterone express," wails Sue, as her younger son is rendered speechless and physically incapacitated by the sight of Pete's 21-year-old goddaughter wandering around in her underwear.

Meanwhile, a spot of babysitting leads Karen to ask awkward questions about the pain of childbirth and Jake argues the case for being allowed to have a girl stay overnight in his room. "He's good," Sue and Pete agree about his persuasive technique. Turns out his parents are better.

Nine more top parenting tips from the Brockmans

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Outnumbered series 5 episode 2 review

After what can only be described as an underwhelming opening, Outnumbered continues this week with an episode that's back on form. There are more laughs, stronger characterisation and - above all - more of a focal point, something last week's subpar outing lacked.

Radio Times review

The Brockman household is rich in theories in this episode. Jake and Ben try out some of their ideas about human behaviour, and Karen continues following the cold, take-no-prisoners, 11-year-old logic that is putting her classmates off her. At swimming, she's graduated from sweet little kids' races to hardcore heats with sledging, instigated by her, at the poolside. Meanwhile, Pete is getting involved in his own inter-parental dispute with Fred out of Call the Midwife (aka Cliff Parisi).

Not surprisingly, now that the cast is older, this final series is calmer than previous ones, with the domestic chaos swapped for something closer to gentle unrest. But Ben can still be relied upon for some boyish levity, which this week comes from twin obsessions: psychology and Spartacus. He's got a net and he's not afraid to use it.

One of the biggest problems with TV sitcoms centring on families is what to do when the child actors get older. This is particularly problematic with a show like Outnumbered, which returned for a fifth and final series this week, primarily because the comedy relied on the innocence and naivety of the kids. Almost seven years on, the children are looking incredibly old most noticeably Ramona Marquez who started playing Karen when she was only five. Now twelve years old, Marquez's Karen was the centre of the action this week as parents Pete (Hugh Dennis) and Sue (Claire Skinner) worried that she was fitting in at her new challenging school. To an extent I feel that writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin have updated the character well as she has now entered her stroppy pre-teen phase. She is a lot sulkier and I was shocked when I actually heard a swear word come out of her mouth. The school that Karen has been sent to has a very strict dress code and Karen is finding some of the work incredibly hard. She's also not fitting in all that well, as we see when she is forced to spend time with her one of her classmates after school. Karen's problems at school lead the ever-worried Sue to send out a late night e-mail to the parents of her daughter's classmates asking if they've had similar problems. The responses she receives are fairly shocking, prompting Pete to tell her that sending any e-mails after 11pm is a bad mistake. Whilst Karen's problems at school ring true, I was less interested in her search for a missing hamster. It just seemed to me like this story was something that Karen would've done while she's younger and I fail to believe that this new sulky brunette girl would be that bothered about a pet.

Elsewhere Karen's two brothers are more ill-served by the storylines especially Ben (Daniel Roche) who is auditioning for the school play. The character of Ben was great when he was a destructive young lad but as a teenager he seems to be a little lost. Though the thought of him playing the lead in a musical version of Spartacus did raise a few chuckles, this was the least realistic of the three plots. I did feel that there was more truth in the antics of older son Jake (Tyger Drew-Honey) who this week got a dodgy tattoo. This was a rite-of-passage story that a lot of teenagers have experienced and the fact that Jake wanted to remove the body art by the end of the episode was also incredibly realistic. Indeed, one thing that Hamilton and Jenkin have always excelled at is making their comedy feel as believable as possible. That's why Outnumbered worked so well when it started and why, for the most part, it still survives in 2014. Jake and Karen's story suited their progression and Pete and Sue continued to be the stereotypical fretting parents. The main thing I found about this series of Outnumbered, as compared to previous outings, is that I didn't laugh as much. While there were a few chuckles and a couple of titters I mostly felt that the comedy was well-observed but didn't find it funny enough to laugh out loud. Despite this I still found a lot to like about Outnumbered and feel that the chemistry between the five actors is still as fine as it was seven years ago. My only hope is that the Brockman family is given a fitting send-off and Outnumbered gets a suitably anarchic final series.

Pete (Hugh Dennis) is in helpline hell. He's got a bill in his handthat he can't pay because it's for £0.00. The person on the other end of the line is insisting he has to pay it though, because the computer says so. I don't think they would do that. You can't pay £0.00. I've just tried, and my computer says it has to be a sum between £0.01 and £99,999.99.

There are other things in this first episode of Outnumbered (BBC One) that don't ring true to me. Such as Frank Pringle's son having been offered drugs at school by his RE teacher (trying to be a bit edgy there, is it, a bit Bad Education?). Or the email firestorm that goes pinging off at quarter past midnight from the parents of Karen's classmates. Wouldn't happen.

What does it matter? Well, maybe it doesn't. It certainly wouldn't matter if Outnumbered was wildly imaginative or anarchic or surreal or anything like that (if only!). But my (admittedly unscientific) research suggests the people who like Outnumbered are the sort of smug metropolitan middle-class Farrow & Ball families who watch it and go: "Look, it's us, our Caspar slams the door too, hahaha!" I think that's what it's trying to do, it's about recognition. So it should ring true.

I'm not a fan, can you tell? If I wanted to watch families like this I could just go round and watch them, in the flesh. I do, in fact; they're my friends, my own family too if I'm honest. But I like my friends and family more than I like the Brockmans. I have to.

I really don't like the Brockmans. Pete and Sue (Claire Skinner - brilliant actor but not brilliant comic actor) are moany, bickery ditherers, constantly worrying about their dull mediocre problems. The children are simply horrid. Actually, they're hardly children any more; suddenly they're enormous, but that doesn't make them any better, just enormously horrid. Giant parasite children feeding off their own pathetic parents.

It would be OK if they were amusingly or at least entertainingly awful. But they're not, they're tiresome. As are their problems - the usual school issues, a frowned-on tattoo, a lost hamster. Perhaps the hamster is lost inside Pete, a sex game gone wrong? No such luck I'm afraid, that would be way too much fun. The hamster may be under the floorboards, it's probably just gone.

Outnumbered, BBC One, review

Outnumbered may not be as funny as it once was, but it's still unmissable for its pure understanding of family life, says Sarah Crompton.

Outnumbered series 5 episode one review

Sitcoms have a limited life span, so when their creators - in this case, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin - stretch them out for a prolonged amount of time, one can grow resentful. After tonight's edition of Outnumbered I was left with the unpleasant aftertaste of having witnessed an old dog being begrudgingly dragged out for a walk.

If you found the child-centric precociousness of Outnumbered funny when the kids were nippers, then the return after a lengthy absence would have come as something of a shock.

In place of the kiddiwinks so many seemed to find charming, there are now hormonally raging teenagers.

The comedy has taken a darker turn - Karen is a misfit at her high-achieving school, Jake has got a (tiny) tattoo and argues with everything his dad says - when he can be bothered - and Ben has taken growth hormones (no, not really, he's just grown to twice the size of everyone else) and is starring in a school musical called Spartacus.

I liked this new incarnation a whole lot better.

Not that it's in any sense a comedy any longer.

You could almost physically feel the weight of the world pressing down on parents Pete and Sue, who'd long ceased to see the funny side of their once cute kids.

So much better than that old bratty lot - but I'm guessing that I'll be outnumbered on that one.